Transcendental Africanity: The Key to Defeating Afrophobia and Reclaiming Global Africa

Mohamed Saliou Camara, Ph.D.

Foreword: Paul Tiyambe Zeleza, Ph.D.

Description

Transcendental Africanity: The Key to Defeating Afrophobia and Reclaiming Global Africa presents a major interdisciplinary contribution to African Studies, Africana philosophy, diaspora studies, and global political thought. Edited by historian and African Studies scholar Dr. Mohamed Saliou Camara, the volume brings together 10 original chapters by international scholars that examine Africanity as a civilizational identity that transcends geography, history, and imposed racial categories.

The volume introduces the doctrine of Transcendental Africanity as both an analytic framework and a global praxis for understanding African identity, confronting Afrophobia, and reconstructing Global Africa as an integrated intellectual and cultural collective. Drawing on political theory, cultural studies, history, philosophy, musicology, and international relations, the contributors explore Africanity as an ontological system rooted in shared memory, spiritual continuity, and collective destiny.

Chapters examine African ontology and metaphysics, the conceptual collapse of racial ideology, diasporic cultural expression through reggae and folklore, Ghana’s transnational engagement with the diaspora, Afrocentric linguistic aesthetics, and the psychological consequences of internalized Afrophobia. The volume also advances original theoretical models—including the Transcendental Africanity Doctrine and the DARED framework—for analyzing coloniality, postcolonial governance, and global African futures.

Positioned within Afrocentric and Pan-African intellectual traditions, this book offers new methodological syntheses and is designed for graduate-level instruction, advanced undergraduate study, and scholarly research. It is suitable for courses in African Studies, Africana Studies, Diaspora Studies, Political Science, Sociology, History, Cultural Studies, and Global Studies.

Transcendental Africanity establishes a foundational reference for scholars investigating African identity as a dynamic, transhistorical, and globally operative system of knowledge and belonging.

Authors and Contributors

Mohamed Saliou Camara, Ph.D.

Mohamed Saliou Camara is a professor of History, Philosophy, and Mass Communication and the current chair of the Department of African Studies at Howard University, Washington, DC. He received an MA and a Ph.D. from Northwestern University in History on a Fulbright Scholarship. He also holds a DES in Philosophy from the Gamal Abdel Nasser University of Conakry (Guinea), and an Advanced Professional Degree in Journalism from the University of Dakar (current Cheikh Anta Diop University, Senegal). Camara taught at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida where he also served as Director of the McNair Scholars Program, Speaker of the Faculty Senate, and Associate Vice President for Academics. Camara is the author of seven books, numerous peer-reviewed articles, and book chapters on African studies with a focus on political history; media, politics, and society; religion and philosophy; civil-military relations; human security; and intra-African foreign relations. His books include His Master’s Voice: Mass Communication and Single-Party Politics in Guinea under Sékou Touré (2005), Le pouvoir politique en Guinée sous Sékou Touré (2007), The Development of a Trans-National Region in West Africa (2010), Historical Dictionary of Guinea (5th Edition) (2013), Political History of Guinea since World War Two (2014), Is There a Distinctively African Way of Knowing: Knowing and Theory of Knowledge in the African Experience (2014), and Health and Human Security in the Mano River Union: Liberia, Sierra Leone, Côte d’Ivoire, and Guinea (2020).

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